You Give Me Shivers
by doxthextimexwarp
Summary: Emily's in the hospital as she reflects on the events of Homecoming. ONE-SHOT.


_This was written late at night as I listened to "Shiver" by Shawn Desman. I was kind of inspired as I listened to the music and sort of just let it flow as I took on a first-person voice as Emily. This is sort-of an expirement of sorts as I take on becoming a character that has already been developed. Thoughts and views are greatly appreciated when you Review._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Pretty Little Liars. _

**You Give Me Shivers**

There's something about the way you look at me. The way you send shivers down my spine. In a good way, not that horrific way that happens whenever I get a message from A. This horrible…someone who keeps terrorizing me and threatening me with my secrets because I'm too afraid to share them myself.

A is a blessing in disguise, really. It's just that with every move she makes, I just end up hurting myself more and more because I hate who I've become. How I can't share my true feelings because I don't think they'll be right. Right as in…politically correct. As in what my parents want me to be.

You understand that. Without having to say anything, you are able to read between the lines. It's what I love about you, how you just simply know. How you can read my emotions, can see the truth behind the façade I place up. You see me.

You feel me. The way your hand sometimes touches mine and static runs through my blood and warms up my face and makes my heart shudder in euphoria. The way your eyes look me down and all I can do is blush. And when you look away with a humorous twinkle in your eye, I can't really tell if maybe you do what you do to tease me or because maybe you just like looking at me.

Because I like looking at you, too. I love how your icy eyes give way to this warm side that barely anyone ever sees. They only see this façade, this wall, that you put up. Just like me. They only see what they think you are: a sadistic juvie who only enjoys the beheading of squirrels.

But it's not really you. Your passion is art. Music. Anything that has to do with a deeper and universal connection that has the ability to draw one person to another, even if it seems like they're worlds away.

You drew me in. The CD cover drawings on your notebook was the first moment of connection between me and you. Those pictures were a key to the secret pleasure that I thought only I could ever have in the small town we lived in. No one else listened to metal. It wasn't deemed appropriate by the Stepford Wives and the Military Fathers.

But you broke boundaries. And I broke them with you.

And now we're facing the consequences.

My friends hate you. My family will hate you. A hates you.

Jenna hates me. And she must matter to you because she's family after all. And that must basically mean that your family will hate me, too.

This isn't a Romeo and Juliet fairytale. I mean, they both die in the end.

Would you fight for me just like Romeo did? Of course you would, you already have. You took me to Homecoming, and let's be real. That's pretty close to doing the extreme in today's society. You sacrificed your night of safety at the movies to a night of possible torture from people who hate you at school.

You put yourself out there for me.

And now you're here, once again, next to me. You're sitting in the hospital chair next to my bed just looking at me. At first, I was slightly scared and shocked that you bothered to show up. I wasn't expecting you to be there after I ran away from you. And when I fell, I was told by the doctors when I woke up this morning that you are the reason I wasn't damaged anymore. You picked me up after I ran and screamed at you out of fear and took me to the front doors and called 911. You rode in the ambulance as my friends still scurried around the school to find me. You held my hand while I was unconcious. You stayed with me until my parents showed up. You saw them from outside the door and got up quickly before they had to look at you and criticize and judge you. Placing the blame on all of this for you.

But, as the nurse said to me later, you took one look at me and shook hands with my parents. You told them that I would be alright and that you hoped I was well. And as my father gaped at you, you gave a curt nod and a small smile and walked off. Knowing deep down that they would hate you if they knew that you, the juvie of the block, had taken me to Homecoming. Regardless of the fact that you had been the one to get me to medical help.

I wasn't expecting you here after reading the file. I figured you would know, in that weird way you always do, what went down when you weren't here with me. Like with the whole Myah thing with the scarf, you knew what was going on behind the scenes that I put up. And you were there with me when I had to figure out that it was you that I wanted.

And as I read the file that the girls had left behind for me to read, I was disgusted by what I read. You had a relationship with your step-sister. A sexual one. That's just gross. But when I start to read the manuscript that was typed up from your visit with the doctor, I realize how the relationship wasn't really that way. You loved her. Before she was family. Before she had any family or friend connection at all. You thought she was the one. And it sickened you that you couldn't follow through with the relationship plans that you had for her.

But then it got twisted when you became family. You swore to never do anything during your father's marriage to her mother. But she showed up in your room one night and she advanced. And you loved her and you couldn't stop. And then it just became a comfortable pattern that repeated itself.

Alison somehow knew. She used it against you when we stuck the bomb in the garage that made Jenna go blind. You were sent to reform school and you took it and accepted it without question. You were punishing yourself, weren't you? You wanted to go away so you could purge yourself of the mess you had caused to Jenna. Because deep down you still regret ever becoming susceptible to emotions that just didn't seem…right. Right to your family. Right to society.

You stopped loving Jenna that summer before we bombed the garage.

That was the summer I moved into town after living on the Navy Base outside of San Diego. You were the one who must have placed the mix CD outside of my window on the fourth morning after we first arrived. I remember never having been able to sleep until that night. I would be up with the light on until two in the morning, when I would leave the house to go for a quick jog knowing that my parents were finally in deep slumber.

And it was there waiting for me when I got back that fourth morning. Wrapped in thin red ribbon and placed outside of my window in one of the garden boxes that my mother decorated so carefully the day before.

I was curious. But also unsure. And I placed it on my bedside table and went throughout my daily business.

I was in bed by eight that night due to parent's military orders. I sat there for an hour until I eyed it once more. I stuck it in one of the disc players I had from when I was younger and gave it a listen.

It was pure, smooth, and delicate. It also marked the first night I was able to fully go to sleep.

You're still looking at me with that same look you gave me that night at the Homecoming Dance when we were in the laboratory. You're looking at me with that quizzical expression as you attempt to disect the words that I have just quietly spoken aloud.

You had asked if I had gone to Homecoming with the wrong person.

And I replied maybe.

I now know that I had replied wrong.

Myah showed up a few hours earlier before the girls showed up and after my parents had left for work that day, telling me she couldn't deal with it anymore. Couldn't deal with me anymore. She was still young, and being the free spirit she was, no one was worth waiting around if she wasn't sure it was a done deal. Wasn't sure that we would be a real thing.

And when I told you all of this, you only gave a small nod and asked if I wish that I was still with Myah.

This was when I truly knew that I had gone to Homecoming with the right person. Because when you asked the butterflies leaped and the birds chirped and my heart pounded and all I could think of was no. I want you.

I want you Toby.

I bite my lip before it curls up into a warm smile and I pat the spot on the bed next to me lightly.

You get up slowly and walk over and plunk down as gracefully as you can right next to me as you watch out for the wiring and IV that's stuck inside my arm. As you adjust yourself against me, you take your arm and wrap it around my shoulder as you tuck me inside you.

You don't say anything when I turned to face you. I take your cheek into my right hand and I draw my face close to yours. I pause to make sure that you haven't moved away, but in that split second, you've moved forward to catch my lips. And in one electric current I'm attracted to you fully.

We pull away to catch our breath and the heart monitor begins to beep out of control. I take a deep breath as you look at me once more with those icy blue eyes and you give me a deep and reassuring smile.

You, Toby, give me shivers.


End file.
